Listening to this song for the first time, I had automatically assumed that this was something from the early 1980s because of that arrangement of 1950s rock n' roll that was the popular thing to emulate in Japanese music for young people at the time. But I was sadly mistaken.
In fact, this is "Omoide no First Kiss" （The First Kiss I Remember）, Teruyo Mitani's（三谷晃代）October 1977 final single, so I guess that lyricist and composer and singer Shogo Hamada（浜田省吾）may have been ahead of the curve by a few years. I had already posted a previous article with Mitani and that was for her debut single "Zekkou"（絶交）, a little less than a year previously. Again, with that 50s sound in there, I couldn't help but think of the popular diner Arnold's on "Happy Days" with all of those bobbysoxer kids twisting around on the dance floor.
As I mentioned in "Zekkou", the re-release of Mitani's lone album "Omoide no First Kiss" in 2016 sparked the singer to make a comeback after so many years.
I love the 50's sound of this song in conjunction with the iconic Idols’ voice. The album cover is like razor-sharp. I wonder if the photographer was using medium-formate film or large-formate?
ReplyDeleteMaybe some of that Photoshop or Photoshop-like software could have come into play here.
DeleteI have a 1977 vinyl copy of this (record is NM) - searching for information on it and this blog comes up. Not much else out there. Got it in a bulk load of records from Japan which I'm slowly digging through. It seems quite rare though - I see CD copies of it online selling for $100+
ReplyDeleteWondering if I should put it on ebay or list on discogs or something but no idea if it's a genuinely rare collectors record or not.
I'm not an auction expert by any means, but perhaps you can keep checking sites such as ebay over the next few months and see what the going rates are.
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